Iris' POV

Darius releases his tight hold on me and turns back.

"Yeah, I did!" he scoffs evilly. He then steps back and my throat is trapped again, this time between his arm and bicep. "And this bitch saved you...again!"

I frantically slap his arm, trying to let him go of me because I can barely breathe and pressure keeps building up inside my head. My eyes begin to water.

"You take one more step, kid, and she dies!" he threatens Kevin when he steps closer.

"I could kick you down just as easily, Darius!" Caspian yells, his voice echoing around the stone walls.

"And she falls with me..." he smirks, evilly.

Karen makes her way forward and stands right in front of us. She looks at me with tears in her eyes, and I worry for a split second if she is apologizing for what she is about to or something. Then she looks back at Darius behind me.

"Why....why are you doing this?" she whispers.

"Why am I doing this? Well then listen up!" he begins, all while crushing my thing neck with the two parts of his thick arms. 

"All this time, me and my mother, we were both treated like trash. Even if I am the King's nephew, my mother being a healer was never given importance. And if you die, I can be king. I can be the ruler of Eponine. Your drama queen of a mother will be at my feet!" he tells maniacally.

He was cheating us this whole time?

"Wh-what the f-fuck is wro-ng with you!?" I choke out, frantically slapping his arms.

"Nothing parvulus, I just want her dead," he says nodding his head towards Karen. "Everything I tried, almost all of them ended up with you. Delmar's lake, the hemlock, the dragon den, everything. And the snake wasn't even useful!"

"What hemlock?" asks Caspian.

"T-The day I v-vomited," I struggle to get out the words. "D-Delmar t-told me!"

"Oh, and why didn't you spill the beans, darling?" he mocks.

I grunt in anger, and raise my leg backward forcefully, right up his balls. He growls in pain releases his hold on me, and I fall forward into Kevin's arms. Karen moves forward and leashes out on him like a feral wolf, both of them dangerously close to the edge and I and Kevin watch in utter shock.

I have to do something. Because I am the only one who can save her if she finds herself in the midst of these walls again.

I lose out Kevin's grip on me and walk forward. Caspian almost loses his balance, but I hold him still before he falls over. Together, we launch on the fighting pair, who not so long ago, were showing forms of affection towards each other. It breaks my heart to see them like this, but knowing that Darius' intentions all this time was to get rid of my best friend, I almost want to wish the same fate for him.

Caspian wraps his hand around Karen's waist, her bouncing in his arms as he screams for her to stop clawing at Darius. Darius tries his maximum to push her down the cavern but I quickly act on my instinct, and shoot a stream of water onto his feet, disrupting his balance on the stone.

While Kevin and Caspian work on calming Karen down, I fight Darius. I keep shooting thin streams of water into his eyes, each stream getting him dangerously close to falling over the edge but I won't stop. With his vision disrupted, Darius finds it incredibly difficult to aim at me. I stop shooting the streams when he is far enough from me, and swiftly pull out my bow and arrow, taking my aim on him.

"S-Stop right now, or I am shooting this!" I warn, breathlessly.

Darius smirks at me."Really parvulus? You'll kill me? I sneaked you cookies remember?" he mocks me viciously, which only increases the temperature of my already boiling blood.

He could have easily injected poison into those damn cookies. But anger and revenge just make a person too dumb.

"You tried to kill my best friend. What makes you think that I wouldn't hesitate to do the same for you?" I spit.

He howls in laughter. "Ooooohhh...."

I cringe before speaking again. "Darius, if you're trying to play the whole scary villain thing here, that's isn't working. What you're doing is hella cringy!" I remark.

"What made you think that you are trash to us brother?" asks Caspian.

"Entonia," he answers.

"What did she do other than giving you the same importance as me?" Caspian asks.

"The first time when she appointed you, and the chief of the bloody army. You were younger and even though I was more experienced than you, being the queen's favorite advisor's son, you got that position!" he shouts, nose flaring. "She hated my mother. She treated my mother as nobody. Being king would be the only way by which I can prove ourselves to her!

And just when I was almost sure that I will be crowned, she shows up out of nowhere!"

"There is a reason for the rivalry between Cornelia and the Queen, Darius!" Caspian argues.

"She is my mother!" Darius yells. "And Entonia doesn't seem to have any problem with you leading the army, Caspian. What if the army falls or Entonia herself gets killed, like your sister, mother, and grandmother did?" he chuckles evilly.

"Darius!"

"What is it, Caspian? Don't tell me that you forgot that you are cursed!" he chuckles. "Isn't that why you stayed away from her?" he asks, pointing at Karen.

"What!?" Karen whispers in shock.

"It only made it easier for me, though!" Darius smirks. My face is scrunched up in disgust as to how much of a cruel man Darius is. I can't believe that there was a whole different person inside the sweet wonderful one that we trusted. Rage flows through my veins at his harsh words, and Caspian absolutely defeated face only makes it harder for me to not release the arrow.

"It's either me or you, Karen...." Darius challenges.

"How about we end this once and for all right here, Darius?! Let's see who gets the throne!" Karen roars, preparing to launch back at Darius. "Just one of us remaining at the end."

But before both of them could start clawing at each other, all the adrenaline build up inside me reacts too quickly, the moment Darius steps forward, and the arrow that rested on my bow slips out of my fingers, flying mid-air.

It pierces right into where I had aimed it, a spurt of blood flowing out of where its motion stopped, and a loud moan escapes the body. His large body loses balance and begins to tilt sideways, and in a matter of milliseconds, my eyes fall on his foot slipping down the edge. Instinctively, the bow is thrown out of my hand, a thick stream of water flowing out of the other, to prevent him from falling.

My eyes catch the stream, flow right past him, and hit the wall far away from us. I don't give up. 

I shoot water out of both my arms, desperately trying to stop Darius from falling, but he flies out of my hands, both mine and his screams piercing the air around us. Something tightens around my waist, pulling me back, while the water I force out keeps missing him. I scream out loud in frustration, as I see my attempts to hold Darius fail miserably, and the friend we once trusted and protected, disappears into the darkness beneath, the echo of his scream, lingering in the air.

My whole world stands still, heart beating in and out of my chest like it is suffocating inside me. I come to sense that it is Kevin's hand wrapped around my waist and my weak body gives out, darkness blocking my vision.

******

Karen's POV

Silence envelops us. I stand frozen in my stop, my eyes focused on the darkness beneath where the person that I was besotted with just disappeared into. My knees give out, and I drop, weakly sitting on the flat platform in between the set of stairs.

A wave of realization swallows me into a hole of darkness.

The person that I trusted, protected, and was smitten with was trying to kill me this whole time. Everything he did, said and showed, was all a lie, a part of his carefully orchestrated play to get rid of me. My body craves someone's warmth, but yet that person was just a lie and now is no more.

My mind runs around things that just happened in the past few minutes. I couldn't decipher the fact that it was Darius's arm that forcefully pushed me away when Iris held me in that water. I refused to believe my eyes when he was cruelly choking the very same girl he lovingly called parvulus. But what shook me from inside out was when he revealed that he never liked me but on the contrary, only wanted to see my death.

But then why didn't he kill me in my sleep? Why didn't he just stab me to death when we were alone in a room? Why didn't he kill me when he had many other chances? There is no one to answer these questions anymore. The last words I spoke to him were about one of us dying. And just that happened. 

I hear a muffled choking from beside me. But I don't have to turn around to know who it is. Darius and Caspian were brothers since when they were kids. I couldn't control myself when Iris died. He must be feeling worse than that, knowing that Darius never shared the love Caspian had for him and only saw him as the cursed one his whole life.

The warmth of a hand on my shoulder breaks me from my trance.

"Karen....." Kevin's voice whispers. My teary, trembling self looks up, and then sideways to see an unconscious Iris.

"W-What hap-pened?" I croak out, my voice is hoarser than ever.

"She's lost energy in the process," he answers, not sounding well either. "She might transform at any moment. Without Delmar giving us further information, I can't tell anything."

I turn away.

"I know I'm not supposed to say this, but.... it'll be fine, Karen." he comforts. "Anyone who did what he did... god, I don't know what I am even saying!"

"Yeah.... I just.... need some time, Kevin. I'll be fine." I say. "We need to take care of, Iris."

He looks back at her, but she now lies in Caspian's arms. 

When did he even get there? 

Caspian holds her face delicately, like holding a little injured bird, and looks deeply. He lightly presses his fingers to her wrist and neck, checking for her pulse.

"She just needs lots of water." he declares, lowly.

Kevin sighs. "Caspian....I'll take care of her. You need to rest."

"I'm fine, Kevin," he says, bluntly.

"Cas...." I whisper, placing a hand on his shoulder. He refuses to look at me. Those sky blue eyes of his are fully focused on an unconscious Iris, they don't even move. He stares at her, like staring blankly into a distance.

When a drop of moisture falls into Iris' cheek, I know that he is breaking inside. Kevin gently picks up Iris from Caspian's arms, leaving him alone with me.

Whatever I say wouldn't suffice to lower his grief. But both of us are grieving. 

"Caspian...." I take his hand in mine. "I'm sorry."

When he doesn't look or reply to me, I continue.

"I can't tell that I know what you're going through, because you shared a deeper....connection with him than I ever did. But... we need to make it out of here. We have to finish what we started." I say. At the sound of this, he looks up at me and that's when I fully see how broken he is.

Teary eyes, and a trembling bottom lip, he is struggling to hold his emotions inside. "It's okay to cry, Caspian."

"I don't want to....b-but i-t's just so hard." he stutters, voice shaking badly. "We were like brothers since we were kids. To know that he's been seeing me just as the cursed one....it hurts so bad, Katarina."

"Let it out, Caspian," I say wrapping my arms around his waist. His heart is beating wildly in his chest; he still is in shock of what happened. His head rests on my shoulder, the wetness of his tears spreading on my skin. I hear his sniffles and I find myself letting my emotions out as well as, reminiscing the wonderful, but falsely created memories, of me and Darius together.  

********

A/N: Ya'll, I'm sobbing right now!